NSW Dryland Salinity Extent and Risk Assessment

Three geospatial datasets map areas of dryland salinity risk in the Murray-Darling Basin and coastal NSW catchments for the years 2000, 2020, and 2050. Risk areas are delineated at a nominal scale of 1:250,000 based on groundwater levels less than 2 meters and air photo interpretation, with each polygon underpinned by either borehole or aerial data. The assessment is considered conservative due to limitations in spatial data coverage, and extrapolation techniques for potential risk were deemed inadequate.

Use Cases

• Mapping current and projected salinity extent based on groundwater depth thresholds.
• Assessing agricultural land degradation risk from shallow, saline water tables.
• Informing regional water and land management policy using conservative, evidence-based spatial extents.
• Comparing salinity risk assessments across Australian states using the standardized less-than-5-meter groundwater metric.

Strengths

• Provides a multi-decadal time series (2000, 2020, 2050) for longitudinal analysis.
• Each delineated area is supported by direct evidence from groundwater bores or air photo interpretation.
• Uses a consistent, fine nominal mapping scale of 1:250,000 across all datasets.

Limitations

• Spatial coverage of the underlying air photo and bore data is limited, leading to a conservative risk estimate.
• The dataset's row count, file size, and specific column schema are not provided in the available metadata.
• Techniques to extrapolate potential risk areas were trialed but considered scientifically inadequate.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences

Collection Method

Merged data from groundwater level measurements and air photo interpretation.

Time Range

2000 to 2050

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-05-14.

Geography

Murray-Darling Basin within NSW and coastal NSW catchments, Australia.